Gallerist Larry Gagosian and artist Jeff Koons settled a $13 million suit with Steven Tananbaum, founder and chief investment officer of GoldenTree Asset Management, over the failure to deliver three sculptures in the estimated time. The suit, filed in April 2018 by Tananbaum, claimed that there had been no progress on the sculptures commissioned between 2013 and 2016 despite a $6.4 million deposit payment. Gagosian made two unsuccessful attempts to dismiss the suits, citing Koons’s working process, which ‘often takes years’. The two parties have now agreed to dismiss all suits and countersuits and the terms of the settlement remain undisclosed.
The Unseen photography fair, which has taken place every September in Amsterdam since 2012, has filed for bankruptcy. The fair has been struggling financially since the Amsterdam photography museum Foam, one of its founding organisers, and two of its backers, BankGiro Lottery and the Blockbuster Fund, withdrew financial support.
Cecilie Hollberg will be reinstalled as the director of the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence. Hollberg left the position in August last year when her contract wasn’t renewed. Many saw this as a part of a greater move by then minister of cultural heritage and activities in Italy, Alberto Bonisoli, to place only Italians at the helm of cultural institutions. The news that Hollberg would return to the Galleria was announced by the current minister of culture Dario Franceschini, who also shared that the ministry was looking to fill 13 directorial positions and would be open the search without distinction of nationality. Franceschini recently returned to this role, having held it initially from 2014 until 2018 before being ousted by Bonisoli.
News of plans to sell and subsequently close Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) has been dismissed by the city’s council. In an attempt to allay what was now growing concern that Glasgow could see one of it’s biggest cultural attractions shuttered, a council spokesperson explained that the budget proposal is part of an annual process where a budget working group submits savings options, that then go into review. Scottish National Party councillor David McDonald took to Twitter, criticising the media for misrepresenting the story.
Auður Jörundsdóttir, who has been a director at i8 Gallery since 2012, has been appointed as director of the Icelandic Art Center. Her tenure is for five years and will include overseeing Iceland’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Jörundsdóttir, who is also currently the chairman of Skaftfell, Center for Visual Arts board, and trustee of The Living Art Museum, replaces Helga Björg Kjerúlf. Meanwhile in Belgium, the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens has appointed Antony Hudek director. Geneva-born, Hudek is the former director of the art space Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp and currently director of Curatorial Studies, a collaborative post-Master’s programme that is shared between the KASK-School of Arts in Ghent, S.M.A.K., and the University of Ghent. He has previously worked as a curator at Tate Liverpool, M HKA (Antwerp) and Raven Row Gallery in London. Hudek takes over from Joost Declercq who is retiring after ten years at the helm of the modern and contemporary art institution.
It was announced on Thursday that Beverly Pepper, the renowned American sculptor, had passed away at the age of 97. Pepper, whose monumental sculptures are installed in public spaces across the world, started life as a painter before moving to Italy in the 1950s. Her pioneering work in steel and mirrored surfaces on a large scale, combining lightness of form with substantial physical presence, established her among the most influential sculptors of her generation.
07 February 2020
